The Specialist's Eye

In Chicago, Atomic Scientist Dr. Harold Urey was miffed because a reporter had quoted him as remarking of Einstein's new Generalized Theory of Gravitation: "If I read it I probably couldn't understand it." Said Dr. Urey: "I could wring that reporter's neck! It was just an idle remark. Who cares that I don't understand the theory of relativity and/or gravity? I'm just a poor chemist, not a physicist. It would mean something if [Dr.] Robert Oppenheimer said it . . ."

Gloomy Author Arthur (Darkness at Noon) Koestler (see BOOKS), booked for punching a Paris policeman, candidly admitted that it was true. He said he celebrated finishing a new book by getting drunk, went to sleep at the curb in his car after deciding "the road seemed to be going uphill all the way." When he was arrested and taken to the station house, "conditioned by my past experiences with policemen, I lost my temper and struck this officer. The police merely held my hands until I had regained my temper. Later the police showed some willingness to forget. I was told I could go home ... I got into my car and drove home. The road had flattened out a lot."

Cinemactor Clifton ("Mr. Belvedere") Webb, 56, a confirmed bachelor, reflected gloomily on his trials & tribulations during the shooting of Cheaper by the Dozen, in which he plays the father of twelve children: "I was a strict disciplinarian. I have a glare that makes children most obedient. I may not be a family man, but I am an actor. I hope the mothers of America will soon show me some mercy. Ever since I dumped the bowl of oatmeal on Roddy McCaskill in Sitting Pretty, I have been called on for assistance in rearing the bubble-gum youth of this nation. Through no desire of my own I have become probably the foremost child psychologist in the country."

The Duke of Windsor undoubtedly had a bit of explaining to do at home. He had announced in Cherbourg that the Duchess of Windsor had "received several offers" of jobs. When they arrived in Manhattan aboard the Queen Elizabeth, the Duchess said to reporters who interviewed them: "I'm afraid that's just a rumor." Then, with a sidelong glance at the Duke: "I have quite a full-time job now." One of the Duke's first jobs on U.S. soil: escorting his Duchess to a New Year's Eve party at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, where the Windsors bumped into another exiled royal couple, King Peter and Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia.

For the second straight year Mrs. William Paley, wife of the head of the Columbia Broadcasting System, headed the list of the ten best-dressed women, picked by the New York Dress Institute. Runners-up in the voting: the Duchess of Windsor and other such repeaters as Mrs. Harrison Williams, the Duchess of Kent,

Mrs. Leland Hayward, Mrs. William Randolph Hearst Jr. A newcomer: Mary (South Pacific) Martin.

Rear Admiral Joseph J. ("Jocko") Clark was sued for $500,000 by a Miss Selma Sinclair, who charged that he hit her after an argument in the lobby of the flossy Washington, D.C. apartment house owned by the admiral's wife. The other version of the story: Admiral Clark, after remonstrating with Miss Sinclair for visiting a sick friend in the building at all hours,nimbly ducked when she tried to sock him in the eye, accidentally collided with her during the maneuver. Scoffed Mrs. Clark: "Everyone knows Admiral Clark is a gentleman."

The Busy Heart

"Within a very few generations," U.S. society will be "as tolerant of premarital but postpubertal sexual relations as are the majority of the other peoples of the world," predicted Yale's scholarly George Peter Murdock, Professor of Anthropology. Speaking before the American Sociological Society in Manhattan, he said: "I am merely making a cold, inescapable scientific prediction. As a scientist I am forced ... to acknowledge that new standards, even if personally unwelcome, probably will work out to the satisfaction of everyone."

A photo arriving from Paris showed beaming Doris ("Richest Blonde in the World") Duke attending a costume party with her most recent ex-husband, Latin American Diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa. Their friends buzzed that they might kiss & make up and remarry.

Cinemactress Betsy Drake, 26, could spend only a one-day honeymoon with thrice-wed Cinemactor Cory (The Awful Truth) Grant, with whom she had been going steady for two years. Hurrying back to Hollywood to work on a new picture, she paused only long enough to issue a statement against planned parenthood: "I think those things should just happen. It would be very depressing for one to know that he was a planned baby."

In Hollywood Cinemactress Ida Lupino announced that she would sue her husband, Producer Collier Young, for a "friendly divorce," but that they would go on being business partners in film production. Ida's personal conclusion: "Business and marriage just don't mix."

In Manhattan rawboned Stage & Screen Actor Henry (Mr. Roberts) Fonda, 44, was mum about newspaper reports that he would ask his socialite second wife, Frances Brokaw Fonda, to sue him for divorce so that he could marry Susan Blanchard, twentyish, stepdaughter of Lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.

Jacque Mercer, 18, Miss America of 1949, was back in Phoenix, Ariz, after a brief honeymoon with her childhood sweetheart, Douglas Cook, 20. Officials of the Atlantic City (NJ.) Miss America Pageant met in solemn conclave, finally decided ?that she could hold onto her title, even though married, until the next Miss America is chosen.

The Restless Foot

Russia's trained-seal journalist, llya Ehrenburg, was nettled by that "arrogant Yankee," Lieut. General Walter Bedell Smith. The former ambassador's memoirs, he wrote, were "filled with those silly fables with which the average American reporter earns milk for his babies"; his definition of culture consisted of "improved vacuum cleaners [and] the aphorisms of Mr. Truman."

High-strung Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, sailing for England after a two-month lecture and concert tour of Canada and the U.S., including Texas, reminisced about the unseasonable weather in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. It was so hot, he said, that "the audience drooped and went to sleep, but woke up at the end and were very demonstrative."

Mohamed Reza Pahlevi, 30, Shah of Iran, wound up a six-week visit to the U.S. with his mind made up. When he marries again, he said, it will be to an Iranian woman. U.S. girls are nice--but "our girls are very nice, too." His U.S. visit gave him some other ideas too. Welcomed back in Teheran with showers of candy and flowers, he told his people his home-coming message was "Work, unity and an end of corruption."

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